


Who D'you Think You're Papsterbating?

by captorvatiing



Series: Bropsee for the Soul [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bubble Bath, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Nudity, Pale Porn, Self Care, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 17:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3418739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captorvatiing/pseuds/captorvatiing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No one can ever know that you’re doing this... Well, no one except Dirk, who suggested it in the first place."</p><p>Psii has been having a hard time so Bro helpfully suggests a relaxing evening of self care, complete with scented candles and the sort of bubble bath you can get lost in, a plan which he has absolutely no ulterior motives for what so ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who D'you Think You're Papsterbating?

This is ridiculous. No one can ever know that you’re doing this.

Well, no one except Dirk, who suggested it in the first place. You’re not quite sure exactly how much sincerity was cloaked underneath that mask of irony, but fuck it. The way you were going it was give this a shot or give yourself one and that… that idea had started to lose its appeal.

You opt not to put music on, guiltily pulling up a track you’d put together from generic sci-fi spaceship noises and the backing to a few grainy, primitive human space exploration videos. No, actually, you pull it up completely bloody guilt free, because fuck Meulin’s sad eyes and fuck the tight little breaths people take when they find out who you are, your experiences are your own and you are entitled to find comfort in whatever the fuck you please.

 _'Yeah.'_ You nod to yourself in the dim light of your empty apartment. _'So there.'_

The track sounds, well, as tacky as the movies you pulled it together from, but it’ll do the trick. If you close your eyes and let your thoughts drift, pulled like tides by the steady drip, drop, drip, drop over the hum of foreign engines it’s _almost_ close enough. The idea wasn’t to recreate your old prison anyway, and the kitschiness of the track adds a certain something that makes you feel warm inside for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the person who helped compile it. You don’t mind that it's not accurate. Like it, even. It’s not as though you miss being strung up and treated like so much squishy garbage, you know that it was awful, you really, really do. Honestly. Everyone can stop reminding you now, thank you. It’s just that after thousands and thousands of sweeps, you adapt. Those clicks and hums and irritating drips lulled you with their tedium for, well, longer than you care to remember right now and as much as you would like to let go of everything even remotely related to your ship, it’s hard to drop the comfort of that kind of familiarity. Not that you’re trying to defend yourself. You don’t have to defend yourself. Not tonight.

You run the ablutions with a little more sopor than is strictly necessary, sloshing it around until it bubbles up and threatens to stain the tiles. You light candles, scattered around the tub, and a stick of incense that smells of lavender and a handful of other Earth plants you don’t know the names of which you are assured alleviate stress or promote relaxation or some other hippie dippie bullshit. You’re not really sure why this bit is important but you were instructed to “go big or go home” so, here you are. Going big. Wow, is this stuff really supposed to be so strong? Holy fuck.

Stripping down is at least a lot easier in the dark. You pointedly ignore how the candlelight flickers over your bare body and throws the ghosts of your old employment into sharp relief. It doesn’t matter, they don’t matter, they aren’t minus signs, nookshitting damnit these affirmations are trite. You hesitate over the water, debating calling the whole thing off. This is stupid. You’re stupid. What good are a handful of tea lights against everything you’ve done? It’s not like you can fix it, you can’t ever be fixed, you’re just going to be shattered and twisted up inside forever and no amount of chamomile or frothy sopor is going to fix that. What the hell were you even thinking? You’re broken and you’re going to hurt for it always.

“But I don’t fucking have to.” You hiss at the mirror. “I don’t deserve it and you can fucking _fight me_.” 

The mirror sneers back at you, blinks, and laughs. You get in the goddamn trap.

The sopor bubbles are slick and soothing against your skin and the warmth starts sapping the tension from your muscles almost immediately. You sigh, tipping your head back until your hair comes back dripping and slowly rubbing it in, throwing decency aside and carding your long fingers through your sodden curls, scratching just ever so gently at the base of your skull. The nearly-there ripple of a purr catches in your chest as you dig the side of your thumbs into your horn beds. You need this so badly it almost hurts, your brain running circles around as you try to remember how to really relax. Maybe you will have to fight the idiot in the mirror after all. 

Something on your white noise track beeps and you jump, tossing your horns on instinct and catching yourself on one of your claws. Fucking, ow. With an irritated hiss, you let your hands fall limp above your head and you slide as far down in the tub as you can go without drowning, your nose poking out of a fortress of bubbles. They pop and crackle as you nuzzle your cheek into the side of you arm, and mutter to yourself.

“Jumpy, too jumpy… Fucking hell, Psii. Where’s your chill?” 

Some several billion light years away, probably. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s two floors down burning popcorn for a pair of doofy wrigglers. 

You shake the sentiment out of your hair and distract yourself by doodling on the wall with sopor like a bratty two sweep old. Neat, interlocking circuit designs, tiny speckled constellations and wide sweeping tendrils of green spread from one end of the trap to the other until you catch yourself sitting upright, sopor bubbles drying prickly on your back, completely immersed by your, er, mess. You’re the goddamn wriggler, it’s you. You admire your work as you slide back down into the water, closing your eyes and imagining your designs spreading out from the walls, morphing into bright galaxies behind your eyelids, the vast expanse of space coloured sopor green and candlelight orange. Soft orange spirals swirl around each other and around you, sparkling with stars. You’d never understood why people compared stars to diamonds. Stars aren’t pale or soft, they’re bright burn hot and so far from gentle. They represent intensity much better, you think. 

The stars were always beautiful, it’s one of the few opinions you’ve managed to hold for the entirety of your too long life. When you were a wriggler you remember looking up at them when you could, and holding sparks between your fingers to pretend when you couldn’t. Even later, when you knew what you were destined for and the thought of space started to fill your “classmates” with cold dread you held those warm stars in your pusher. You never got tired of seeing the stars. Sometimes you’d save them, maps and snapshots of distant nebulae, like paintings on the dark sky, kept flat and digitized like flowers between the pages of a book. You collected them that way, and when you needed it they reminded you that even when you were surrounded by so much ugliness, there was still beauty in the universe to look forward to.  
  
You sigh, running the knuckles of one hand gently over the sensitive curve of your ear, tracing the split with the soft pads of your fingers and pinching the tips gently between your thumb and knuckle. You shiver and churr under your breath and somebody opens the door.

The splash from your flail is truly spectacular, and when you peek over the rim of the trap Dirk is standing there absolutely soaked from his chest to his knees.

“Oops?” You offer.

“Dude, if you thought I needed a wash you coulda just said.” 

You flick a little more water at him a disappear back into the bubbles like a hippogator. Out of the corner of your eye you see him pulling off his shirt and in a split second you make a decision that you’re fairly certain you’re going to regret, but that’s future you’s problem.

“Join me.” You say. 

His hands twitch at the button of his jeans and hesitates, one fine eyebrow raising over his shades. 

“You sure?” He asks. “You were looking a lil busy when I walked in-”

You splash him again, your face burning yellow, but he’s laughing and your pusher starts doing something warm and pointy and you don’t know if it’s the sopor or something else and you just don’t care. You want it to do that _more._

“Get in the fucking tub.” You snap. 

He strips down, hesitating at the band of his underwear but hey, go big or go home right? Even the hat and the shades get shucked and in seconds he’s buck naked and the two of you are shifting, shoving and splashing each other as you try to claim space in a trap that most definitely wasn’t designed with two grown ass men in mind. The floor floods with displaced bubbles, Dirk gets something pointy far too close to his squishy human bits and you get more than one accidental thumb to the grubscars and one patently deliberate one. Eventually the waves settle and you lean back, his chest pressed against the warmth of your back. You _almost_ don’t care that he can see your scars from there. He rests his chin on your bony shoulder, stubble scratching at the side of your jaw, and snakes his arms around your waist, holding you tight. Yep, there it is. Now you _definitely_ don’t care. How you ever relaxed in the bubbles without him there is a mystery. 

After a couple of comfortable minutes he starts gently stroking his hands over the flat of your stomach and breaks the silence.

“So,” He says, “I was right about the girls night in thing?”

He’s shooting for cocky, you’re pretty sure, but you catch the questioning note. Instead of answering you nuzzle your cheek against his and purr deep in your chest. 

“Guess that’s a yes.” He mutters, smoothing his hands flat over your abs.

The arches of his palms just brush over the thick scar there without touching as he spreads his fingers out against the muscles on either side. He’s a step cooler than you and sopor slick and you have not stopped purring. You wonder briefly if he can feel it vibrating in your gut. You muss the spikes at the side of his head with your outer horn and carefully rest your hands over his. There’s nothing you can do to stop the nasal little giggle escaping you as the situation sinks in.

“Y’know if you were a troll this would be-”

“Basically a goddamn porno? Hell yeah.”

You raise an eyebrow at him and he laughs.  
.  
“I dunno if you forgot who you’re papsterbating here but I’d like to gently remind you how the fuck I make my money.” He says, you can feel him grinning against your shoulder. “You better believe I googled that troll shit first goddamn thing.”

“You knew.” You say.

“...Yep.” 

You trail a claw lightly up his arm just to feel him shiver. 

“So when you suggested the ablutions…”

“Eeyyeah that particular move may or may not’ve been a set up depending on whether you’re about to gore me.” For a second he sounds genuinely nervous and it’s adorable. There’s a quiet pause where you make him wait. “...In my defense, I didn’t expect to walk in on you troll-moirawhatsit jerking it.” 

You elbow him in the side and before he can move away you wind your fingers through his and lock his hands to your sides. His wheeze matches your breathy laugh and the candlelight flickers. Carefully, you shift and turn as far as your can at the waist to butt your forehead against his. You chirp at him, and it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t really _get_ what the fuck it means because you feel the relief wash over him anyway. When you kiss him his lips are chapped and your teeth get in the way a little, and when you pull back he’s got a shit eating smirk plastered across his face that sort of makes you want to elbow him again but your pusher throbs like it’s trying to do backflips and you’re really not sure you’ve ever felt like this about anyone. It’d be terrifying if it wasn’t so, well, nice.

You settle back down against his chest, stroking your thumbs along the side of his hands.

“Thank you.” You whisper.

He grunts and kisses you between the horns. 

“...You filthy quadrant smearing fuckwad.” You continue.

By the time you’ve dodged his half assed attack and he’s got you pinned back down by the horns there’s absolutely no hope for the floor, but the way your laughter keeps getting broken up by purring is definitely worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Their relationship is sorta implied to be a red/pale/human mashup, but you can read it however the fuck you like. As long as you don't read it that they're about to fuck in the bath because they're absolutely not. This particular scene is 100% non-sexual even if their relationship is. Get your old man weeners out of my non-sexual intimacy dagnabbit.


End file.
